The Debian project has frozen the codebase for the next generation release, Version 5.0 ("Lenny") of its Linux distribution. This rules out any changes to software packages, except where the changes are absolutely necessary for the release.

In his message to the developer mailing list, Marc Brockschmidt states the terms under which the release managers will accept changes: they include changes that resolve release critical errors (of the "critical", "severe" and "serious" categories. Documentation updates, translations, and changes that have already been approved by the release team will also be accepted.

The freeze sees the release managers keeping to the annnouncement made last week, and take Debian a step closer to the final release planned for September.

To make sure that any remaining bugs are resolved as quickly as possible, the release team has published a list of release-critical bugs on an unofficial website. It encourages Debian developers to decide on a bug, resolve it, and let the release team know. For more details go to Brockschmidt's archived message.